SPI Podcast Session #69 How to Build Buzz and Why it's Better than Hype show notes at: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/session69 Pat: This is the Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn, session #69! [singing] You've got a friend in me! You've gotta friend in me! Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, who learned how to fold laundry by watching YouTube: Pat Flynn! Pat: Hey, what's up? This is Pat Flynn and welcome to session 69 of the SPI podcast. So happy, so happy as always to be bringing you another show today. Just a really quick thank you to those of you who messaged me on Twitter after the last session, session #68. I had a blast just reading all those tweets about it. It was hilarious. Some people laughed, some people even got a little bit upset at me. Not in a really aggressive way, but just, you know, "hahaha, that was funny" type of way. If you're not exactly sure what I m talking about, then I guess you've got to listen to episode 68! This brings me right into exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Building buzz. How do you build buzz for something that you're coming out with soon, or something that maybe you have already that you really want people to pay attention to? When you build buzz for something, you're creating anticipation. You re getting people excited about something that's to come. That's when you get people to want more. That's when you get them to want to do things like keep refreshing your page just to see if what you said was coming out yet, or has come out yet. Which is something that actually happened to me on my site the other day. I'll tell you about that in just a second. But if you build buzz and you execute correctly, the results can be amazing. When you build buzz for something, you re doing the work beforehand, so that when you come out with whatever it is that you're coming out with, you do the launch or publish or whatever, things start to happen and roll on their own, because you've done the hard work already. Of course, as you're launching or publishing you can do things to keep
that buzz going and keep it spreading. You know, get people who didn't know about whatever it is, that you have to realize what they've been missing out on. These are the things that we're going to talk about today. The first thing you have to realize about buzz is that it's started by you, it's created by you. But it really is fueled and generated by other people. You know, other people fuel it. People are the engine behind buzz. Other people. Buzz is a term used in word-of-mouth marketing which today doesn't mean just from person to person in person but also, you know, person to person or person to persons, plural, on platforms like blogs and social media. News, email lists, and all the things that we should be paying attention to already if you're doing business online. The good news is that we have all the tools available to create buzz already. But as we all know, tools need to be used correctly in order for them to work for us. Another important distinction to consider before we move on is the different between buzz and hype. On the surface, they might be considered the same thing. Creating buzz for something, creating hype for something, getting people excited. But the main difference between buzz and hype is what people are getting excited FOR. Or actually how and why people are getting excited. To me, hype, the noun==let's look at a dictionary definition of it really quick. Hype, noun, two definitions. First one: extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion. You see, this is to me what gets people into trouble. It's why internet marketers have a bad name. It's the hype. Hype isn't--hype isn't bad, necessarily, but overhyping is. It's really easy to do. That s when you hear the "You can earn 5 billion dollars in two days with no work with this one product." It's just ridiculous! And so hype is sort of self-promotion. You're doing it. Primarily it's sort of an outbound excitement type of thing that you're doing. Buzz, however. I mean, think about it. Can you overbuzz? Have you ever even heard of that term, overbuzz? "There was too much buzz out there!" We don't hear that, really, very often. It's because buzz is an inbound form of excitement. You flip a switch, you make the announcement, you put things into place and then everyone does the talking for you and draws attention in toward you. That's buzz. And when someone else talks about you in an extravagant way, it's less dangerous than if you were to talk about yourself in an extravagant way.
I hope that makes sense. We're not hyping things up, we're laying the foundation for buzz to occur. Okay? So what's that second definition? It was, #2--hypodermic needle or injection or a drug addict, which is kind of interesting, when you really think about it. Check this out. I'm looking at the origin of the word hype right now, and it comes from 1925-1930, Americanism. Incense, to trick, to swindle. To trick and to swindle. WE don't want to trick! We don't want to swindle people! Check out the origin of the word buzz. There's a few origin of this word and it's different meanings. From the late 15th century, echoic of bees and other insects--right? Buzzzz! Aviation, sense of fly low and close in 1941. But check this out! A noun meaning a busy rumor, attested from the 16th century. A busy rumor! How awesome to think of buzz as a busy rumor. Think about it that way. That s what I want you to think about. Now that we've had our English lesson, you know, I want to ask you a question. What company is really good at creating buzz right now? Think about a company that has everyone talking about it before they unveil something new. Can you think of one? If you said Apple, then you're right. They're so good at creating buzz about stuff. Yes, we're going to talk about Apple for a little bit. I know it's cliché to use Apple as an example of marketing. I mean, everybody does it. But I think in all previous 68 episodes I haven t even used Apple as an example yet for anything, so I might as well do that now, when it's something that they do really, really well, which is the topic of today's show, creating buzz. You might be thinking this: you might be thinking "Pat, it's so easy for Apple to create buzz, because they have so many customers already! They have raving fans! They have people that are expecting something new on a very predictable schedule." My response to you is YEAH! Yes, yes, yes, yes, you are absolutely right. And I want you to pay attention to what I just said before all those yes's. Let's break it down. First part--it's so easy because they have so many customers already.
They have an existing audience, customer base. There's no easier way to start building buzz for something than if you already have an existing audience. On your blog that's followers, subscribers, people on your email list, people who already read your stuff. People on social media and especially previous customers. If you're going to build buzz, start with people who know about you already and contact them directly if you can about what's to come. Those are the people who are already going to be excited about what you have to offer, even without knowing exactly what it is yet. And you just drop in teasers here or there, especially if they don't know what it is, they're going to be really excited. If you've already provided some awesome experience for them in the past in the form of a product, a course, or whatever. Coaching experience, blog articles, podcasts, whatever, then they're going to want more just because they had a good experience with you already. And when you let them know something new is coming out, they're primed. They're primed. The next part of what I had previously said: Raving fans. Apple doesn't just have a customer base. They build a culture of raving fans. People who, when they hear something new is coming out, the new iphone or the new this or that or whatever, they're going to talk about it. And they're not going to stop. They're going to blog about it, tweet about it, Facebook about it, talk about it over lunch and dinner. They're going to bother people with how much they're excited about this. They're going to dream about whatever it is. If you can get raving fans, then you're money. We can talk the whole episode about obtaining raving fans and how to get that. But we'll save that one for later because that's a really interesting and important topic that I want to leave on its own podcast. Don't worry if--you don't need all this. You don't need a customer base, although it helps. You don't need raving fans. Of course, it helps. If you're just getting starting and you don't have an existing customer base or don't have raving fans, don't worry. Just sharing why it's so easy for Apple right now, and this is of course something you can shoot for. We'll talk about stuff for those of you who are really just starting from scratch in just a second, but I want to continue. We talked about they already have customers, they have raving fans. Next, people who are expecting something new. Expectation is the
backbone behind building buzz. It's when people expect something new. Something that may potentially change the game or improve their lives. That's when buzz happens. The trick is creating that expectation. For Apple specifically, people expect Apple to create new things. New version of whatever! And just in general. Each time there's massive amounts of buzz. If you can create something in your business that people can expect. Something, maybe a line of products, and new ones come out here and there or a series of something. For instance, I do the income report, and that builds buzz every month, because people expect it and it's something new. They know what's coming but they don't know exactly what it's going to be like yet. That s what I do, and right now I'm in the middle of this thing called the Niche Site Duel, part 2. I'll get into that later in this session. Maybe--I'm just putting this out there--maybe you're an Amazon fiction writer, and you're creating a sense of--a series of books, like episodes of a show, or parts of a movie. That's creating something people can look forward to, especially if you leave everyone hanging at the end of one of the previous books. Sort of like--you know, back to the future. In Part 1 Doc Brown came back, loaded up Mr. Fusion with beer and banana peels and then he and Marty and Jennifer flew off to, whoever, nobody knows. It said "To be continued." That built a whole bunch of buzz for part 2. In part 2 of Back to the Future, Doc got zapped back into who knows where until a car pulls up right then and there, hands Marty a letter from the past--from none other than Doc Brown who is in the wild, wild west. Crazy, right? Now you want to go see what the heck's going on there. And so that builds buzz for movie #3. Gosh, you all know I'm a Back to the Future freak, right? Anyway, when you get people to expect something new, something that's coming out later, they're going to generate buzz about it. But again, Apple's been doing this for a while, so they have that working to their advantage because it's just sort of part of what they do already. The last part of what I said earlier is that it's on a very predictable schedule. When people know what date something is going to happen, not only will people anticipate that specific date and get excited about it, but if you have a specific schedule you can follow leading up that launch date. You can better drop hints and generate excitement leading up to that date. Apple almost predictably comes out with new stuff each year, during their Apple Keynote presentations.
There's a website dedicated to telling you whether or not it's actually a good time to buy a specific apple product, based on when they can predict the next models coming out. That website is--if you go to buyersguide.macrumors.com. It's crazy, right? There's an entire website dedicated to Mac rumors. If you don't think buzz is important--you know, busy rumors--just see what kind of excitement this stuff gives people. Entire blogs dedicated to buzz. I mean, that's awesome! Of course, that's Apple and we're not Apple. So what can we do to create buzz? How do we create buzz if we don't have a huge customer base? Or maybe you're selling something, or coming out with something brand new, so you don't have that customer base. Maybe you've just recently started, but, you know, you know you have something worth buzzing about but nobody else knows about yet. The truth is, this is the truth. If you have something awesome, you have something that you know is helpful for people, that is worth talking about, and if you just build it, you're going to lose. You probably thought I was going to say something else. If you just build it, you're going to lose. You can't just build it. You have to market, too. If you just build it, they're not going to come unless you get it in front of people. In front of the right people, too. But you don't have any people, you say, or you have a small group of people. Well, if you have a small group of people or followers already, we're going to be a small existing customer base, they are everything to you. They should be everything to you. Love them. Get them excited. I mean, have you ever heard of this thing called your first thousand true fans? I mean, maybe you haven't, but what you want to do is understand and try to get your first thousand true fans. If you're not there yet, get your first 100 or even 10. These are people you know the names of. Find your true fans and get them to become ambassadors. Get them involved! You don't need very many people to make things happen. But whether you have people of your own or not, you're going to need to find more. The way to do that is to put yourself on some platforms where people already exist. Where people are already looking for something you have to offers. You actually have to market and do the work in order to build buzz.
Most people build and hope and then nothing happens. That's why they fail. Now, let me play an audio clip for you that was from a previous episode about a guy who was a nobody before who didn't just sit back and build something and just wait. He went out there and made things happen. You may recognize his voice, let me play it for you. Man: The approach I took is very similar to what echoed in an article called 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly, who is the founding editor of Wired Magazine. I chose the least crowded channel, IE in-person meeting as opposed to phone or email, to connect with people who are thought leaders and specific audiences, specific blogs, etc., by going to events like South by Southwest Interactive, BlogWorld Expo and so on. And I never hard sold the book. What I mean by that is, just shouting louder or trying to do a better job of selling in a very mechanized way, it's not the best way to find a fit for your content, for talking about content. My general approach was, because I knew no one, is I would sit in on the session, listen to panelists on topics that interested me, then approached the moderator of the panel and give them 10 seconds on who I was, and asked them who they thought I might get along with, who was attending the event, whether speaker or attendee. And then I would meet person after person, approaching things very similarly, and ask each person "Is there anyone else you think I should meet while I'm here?" And I asked a lot of questions. What I mean by that is, from the very outset I wanted to understand what people were doing, what they were planning on doing, what they did outside of work, and then if they asked me "What are you up to?" I would say "Oh, I'm working on my first book. It's pretty nerve-wracking, I don't know what I m doing, but I'm here trying to figure out digital because my publisher has their hand in everything else, and this is really the only thing that I can do myself, and I don't know the first thing." And I would pretty much stop there. I would go back to asking them questions, and if they dug deeper--"what is your book about?" or "Oh, really?" and they asked about a certain aspect, I would answer it. And at the very end, if someone genuinely seemed interested--if not, I never pushed it- -if someone genuinely seemed interested, I would say "Look, I have a bunch of advance copies that I don't have places to send. If you'd like, I can just--i don't necessarily think you'd like the entire book, but I could use Post It notes to pick the 20
pages that I think you would really like and send it off for you if you'd like that." And if they said yes, great. If they said no, I've got too much going on, that's fine, too. What that ensured was a few things. #1, not only did I identify in many cases single author blogs with audiences of 100,000 or more in many cases, where the content was a perfect fit, because they'd gone through these filters of just questioning back and forth. Secondly, I ensured that I was developing friendships and relationships with people I like as people anyway, and who liked me as a person anyway. So that when I had the next launch, The 4-Hour Body, when I had the launch after that, The 4-Hour Chef-- these are the same people I am still friends with started in 2007, so it was relationship building as opposed to transactional. Pat: Of course, that was Mr. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, talking about how he marketed that book and when from nowhere to almost everywhere utilizing the power of building relationships. Then that book was rejected by 27, I think, publishers before it was finally published. That s how much he believed in this product, which obviously is really important. He didn't have a platform of his own yet. So what did he do? He went out there, met people face-to-face. He didn't pitch to them, he just became friends with them, and then he got them interested in what he was doing. And then what happened? His book came out, everyone started talking about it, and he was essentially everywhere. He put in the hard work, the buzz was being built for him, and his book shot to #1 as a New York Times best seller. That's the first strategy. We're going to go over a number of various strategies for building buzz. Some may be better for you than others. But what Mr. Tim Ferris did is probably the best thing you can do. It's not always the easiest, but meeting people in person at conferences, at meet-ups, becoming friends, getting them interested in what you're up to, of course, letting them know about what you're doing and asking them for help. Giving them free copies of whatever it is you have to offer so they can make the decision on their own whether to share it and invest themselves in it, too, or blog about it or whatever. That's the best thing you can do and I'm really happy that I was able to play that there for you from Tim again, because it's so important.
If you can't meet in person, not everyone can, the next best thing is to make friends online with people who will hopefully share the same audiences, your target audience. And yes, in person is best, but you can probably relate to this next statement. You can become really good friends with people online before you even meet them in person. It takes time of course, but I know from experience. I have a ton of friends that are online only, who I felt a real connection with before I ever finally met them at a conference. Yeah, I've met most of them already, but even still we all talk to each other even before we met. We link to each other, we retweet each other, even talk on Skype and help each other out when we need to, or feel like we have something worth promoting for each other. This is great! If you have a group of close friends and you're coming out with something, let them know about it way ahead of time. Talk to them like you normally talk to them and talk to them about how excited you are. Even get them involved. That's something I love to do, especially in my Mastermind groups. I'm like "Hey guys, I'm so excited about this thing that I have coming up. I'm still working through it. I'm struggling a little bit. This is how I want it to work. What do you guys think? Is this useful to you? How might you be able to help me out? What do you think should be included? And of course if they're interested and if they have something to add, they'll be interested in keeping up with my progress and if they're a good friend and it fits their audience, they're going to want to promote it. There's not even any work involved after that, you know. It's just time and relationship building. That s strategy #1 and 2. #1 meet and greet and share what's neat. #2, build relationships and friends with people online. Those are both, of course, more long-term strategies, but they're so important. Pick up the phone, too. Seriously, people. Get on the phone, call people to talk, and see if there are any synergies between you and others. Other people, and even other companies. You may connect with someone at another company who may jive with what you have going on. It seriously just takes one to really help you out, and once you land that big name, for example, to work with you on something? That's almost instant credibility right there, which will get you in with other people, too.
Other strategies that I've seen being used. Strategy #3, the wait list. Anything with a waitlist must be pretty good, right? Not always. But if there's a wait list, this is what happens. If you're on it, you're anticipating when you're on it. You might not be on a waitlist anymore, you might be in. You're almost in but not quite. And that's really powerful. And then when you're in, you share how awesome it is to be in, and you get others who want to be on the waitlist too to come and be like "Oh, I want that!" People who don't even know about whatever it is in the first place might come just because there are people in the waitlist or who are in already sharing their experience with that product. Case in point, there's this iphone app that just recently came out called Mailbox. It's a mail client for ios that can be used instead of the built-in mail app from Apple. The way they released it was a slow rollout, using a waitlist, which is actually pretty common in the start-up world. What they did was they released the app to the first X number of people who downloaded it--i'm not sure the exact number. But then everyone else who downloaded it after got put on the waitlist, one that you could actually see where you were in line and how many spots were both ahead of you and also the number of people who signed up and got the app after you. So people who were in line behind you. I remember seeing a picture of someone's placement on the waitlist for this app on Instagram. It was like 150,000 in line, it said. So of course, I immediately downloaded the app, because I didn't want to be, I didn't want to wait any longer. The app's free, so I could hold my place in line, too, and I was seeing--i think I was at 350,000 in line. And then of course they conveniently put a share button on there for anyone to announce where they were in line with a link to download the app, which was really smart. There was lots of press about this app, and as a result of the buzz that was created, they just exploded. It was pretty awesome how they managed to use the waitlist to their advantage! Because they could've easily just released it to everybody the moment they downloaded it, but they didn't. They used the power of the waitlist to generate buzz.
Okay, strategy #4--scarcity. Similar to the waitlist, if people know there's only a limited number of spots available for something like a course or maybe you're going to sell X number of copies of something, then that creates buzz, too, while at the same time playing on people's need to not want to lose out on an opportunity. People hate to lose opportunities, which the scarcity thing is great for. It could be like I said for a limited number of spots in something, or a number of copies, or it could be also a limited amount of time. This is why sales work so well. Right now it's Memorial Day and I'm seeing all these commercials on TV and hearing them on the radio for sales for all kinds of things that end today. Cars or whatever sales are going on at the mall. Just this weekend, only until end of day Monday, or something. That makes people come into the stores now and start talking about it with their friends because they want to be the one to tell their friends that they have these opportunities, makes them look better, and feel empowered, and thus buzz ensues. You may have seen promotions done online that utilize a timer. That's scarcity in the sense that time will run out for that deal. If you're going to use this strategy and have a timer or, say, something's only limited for a certain amount of time or a certain number of spots. You need to make sure you stick to the schedule and truly limit the spots or stop selling after times runs out. If you don't, then you're just falsely using scarcity and people can see right through that. That's just bad. Sometimes you can go to these pages with a timer and you just refresh it and it just resets. That's not cool. You might as well be an infomercial playing at 3:30 in the morning, right? That's scarcity, using scarcity to build buzz. This is great, especially if you're coming out with one of your first products and you want to make sure you fill all the spots and you want to limit it to a number of spots so you can have a limited number of beta users in there to help you refine the product before you open it up for even more people.
Strategy #5--make an event out of it. you're going to launch something or come out with something new, you want to treat the day it comes out like a huge deal, like it's a really big event. If you can think of it that way, lots of things will fall into place. This is more of a mindset strategy than it is an actionable strategy because it involves lots of actions coming together. Think of a wedding. That's a huge deal--or a graduation. It's something people know that's coming, so there's a specific date to look forward to. It's something to celebrate, something to plan ahead for. For a wedding, there's the "save the date" card which comes 3 months in advance or whatever. The wedding invitations, the engagement party, the bachelor and bachelorette parties. All this stuff leading up to the big day. All creating buzz for it. Same thing for graduation and baby showers and babies and--yea, all that stuff. There's lots of planning involved and lots of people involved, too. So think of your launch like that, and also case in point--just know that it can't be done alone. The more help you can get along the way, the more successful your launch, promotion or whatever it is, is going to be. And it has to be planned ahead. This is exactly what I did for the recent Niche Site tool. That was just launched. Instead of "save the date cards" and RSVPs and engagement parties and stuff like that, I published strategically. research posts for niche site tool related stuff. And I hinted at the new Niche Site Duel coming out. Then I mentioned the date of when it was going to launch and I got people involved to let me know they wherein, and in one single post I had over 1000 comments in 24 hours from people who were essentially RSVP ing to join me. And you know what? So many people last Wednesday, when I said that the Niche Site Duel was going to launch, they were like emailing me and sending me tweets "where's your post? Where's your post? I keep hitting refresh, F5 on my keyboard is wearing out!" You know, it was just so awesome to see that there was so much buzz for this thing that I was promoting or coming out with. And it wasn't even a product, it was just a series of posts that's coming out, or an experiment or case study that's happening. I sort of drip fed little pieces leading up to the big event here and there. First through a number of research posts and podcast sessions I did talking about things like keyword research and search engine optimization. I used big names like Neil Patel and other ones people knew, Spencer Haws, which added to the flare of course.
Do the same thing. Do the same thing. If you're going to launch something before the day of your big event or launch, share interviews or pieces of what you're going to be launching for free with your audience. And make it worth incredible value. Give it away for free. It's only going to help you spread the word and generate word of mouth buzz, so that when you do launch things will happen on their own, because people are already expecting it and waiting for it. Just make a huge event out of it. Okay, strategy #6--create a series. Leading up to the event can be pretty confusing for some. How do you do it? How do you lead up to your event that you're creating? One way I like to think about it is by creating a series. You know, this is very common and sort of goes along the themes of the whole product launch formula thing that you may have heard of before. What it is, is a series of typically, videos or something of high value that comes out sequentially over time that build onto each other and then finally the event happens at the end, at the culmination of it all. The purpose of the series is to build buzz and anticipation for the event that is to come. I just mentioned the Niche Site Duel 2.0 thing that I m doing right now. It was about the span of two weeks that I prepared for this and included a rather--i started by including a rather controversial video interview with Alex Becker about SEO to start. That wasn't by accident. That was on purpose. I knew it was going to start to get people talking and interested in what was going on. Then it was a couple of podcast sessions, a post here or there, and then another interview, all two or three days apart from each other. They each added a different flavor to the mix. Nothing was repeated. They all added value, and also within each of those posts or podcasts I got more and more revealing about what, exactly, was going to happen, when the exact launch date for Niche Site Duel 2.0 was, and the final piece of the series, which was the beginning of a case study, just came out last week and was completely in high demand, so it was awesome. I literally felt a ton of pressure to get that post published by the end of the day, my launch post for NSD2.0, which is why some of you on Twitter probably saw that I mentioned that the last couple of paragraphs were giving me so much trouble because they were just the most important ones and I knew everybody was waiting for me, so I felt a lot of pressure there. It was kind of interesting.
Okay, strategy #7. This is something I've seen a lot of top marketers do online and I haven't yet had the experience of doing this myself, but a lot of people do this, especially at the end of their series on their event day. What they do is they host webinars before or for a launch instead of just saying 'Oh hey, here's my thing, come get it." They say "Hey, come on this webinar with me, I'll teach you or show you how to do this and that, and then I'll be pitching something at the end." Providing a ton of free value--people can go to the webinar and get exactly what they need and leave. But what happens is, you give away so much free stuff and people get to know who you are. When you pitch at the end, you know, again if you just--if you just give away so much value that not much pitching is needed but you still have to pitch...and, yeah. They created an event out of the launch of their product. It's not just a specific type of event, it's not just a launch day, but a webinar for people to come on, they can ask questions, interact, participate, be involved in the discussion-- all that is so important. A lot of you may have seen my buddy Derek Halpern from socialtriggers.com. He's doing a lot of webinars lately. You may have seen some of his ads on Facebook for various things he has going on. And you know what? He's doing really, really well with them and I get his emails, too, leading up to his promotions. So make sure you follow him, sign up to his email list, and just see what he does. Obviously he has a very particular style. It's pretty much the complete opposite of me, but you know, we're really good friends for some reason. Check out the timing of everything he does. I really look up to him and the way he does his marketing, although I'm much more reserved in how I speak. Strategy #8--run a sweepstakes or a contest. So, sweepstakes or contests are great for creating viral campaigns and spreading awareness of your brand and creating buzz for something particular you might be coming out with. Now, please note that there are typically a lot of rules and legal things that go along with sweepstakes and contests, which are different, actually. Sweepstakes award winners at random. Contests award winners based on skill or popularity or judging of some kind. Something to think about.
But yeah, there are often a lot of rules and legal things that go along with both contests and sweepstakes, so just keep that in mind if you're going to run a giveaway, make sure that you do it the right way. I ran one for Niche Site Duel--I know, I keep using that as an example, but I definitely and purposefully used most of these tools in my toolbox for the launch of it. In one of the posts I asked people to leave a comment in order to be entered into a random drawing for a Long Tail Pro, which is a software keyword research and SEO analysis tool that I'll be using during this case study. I was going to give away 5 copies. That's the post that led to about 1200 comments within the first 24 hours, which does wonders for social proof of course. I probably could've taken that a step further and asked people to Like the post in order to qualify or maybe get another entry, or tweet using a hashtag of some sort to get an extra entry or something like that. I didn't do that, but it was still successful, and when I launched the Niche Site Tool about 2000 people IMMEDIATELY signed up to participate so far. And counting! More and more coming each day, which is really cool. In the future, I'm definitely going to make use of social media a lot better when it comes to contests and sweepstakes so just keep that in mind. I know Jeremy from ShoeMoney.com, he used...he used to use Twitter really, really well for creating viral campaigns. I can't remember exactly where or what--i think he created some sort of post talking about he did that --I'll try to find it! If I do, I'll put it on the show notes, smartpassiveincome.com/session69. It shares how utilized Twitter for some of his viral campaigns. I don't know if it's still around, about 4 or 5 years ago I read into that. He was one of the first to really do some interesting things on Twitter. And lastly, let's talk about strategy #9, which is get testimonials. I sort of mentioned this before, but not really. Before you launch, give it away, whatever it is you have, give it away to a few key people and get them to say something great about it, if you can. If you can, get it done on video, too. It's just much more real and personable that way. The bigger name the person has, as in the more popular they are, the more they're going to connect with their target audience, and the more of an impact that video or testimonial will make and the more buzz it's going to make.
This is something you can share before you launch with everybody, or even after you launch, or as you launch. You know, or you can just keep it on your sales page, but the more great testimonials you can get the better. Having someone else talk about how good your product is, is much, much more powerful than anything you can ever say on your own. So think about any sort of video game, or how about a movie that's not quite out yet--you know, you start to get hit with a series of trailers. It's a series. You get to see these trailers on TV, you hear them on the radio, you check them out on the app, the trailer app on your phone. Maybe you go to the movies and see a theatrical trailer there. They're just injecting their brand or their movie into your lives here and there until you start to take notice. You'll notice that on those trailers or in magazines when you see promos for these movies, you'll see quotes from famous magazines. You know, they're testimonials. Rolling Stone says "It can't get any better than this!" People magazine says "Breathtaking!"--that's my favorite one. Seriously, you can look at any sort of thing that comes out on a certain date, something with millions of dollars in advertising behind it, and just see what they do. And the beauty of it is that we can do a lot of the same things as them just in the online world. And in the online world, and especially in the niche that you're serving, it's definitely going to cost much less. And it may not even you cost you anything at all. Movies that come out, books, presidential debates, new electronic devices or video game systems, new pieces of software, the new Air Jordans or the new Nike Air Mags, you know, Google Glass, pay attention. Actually, pay attention to Google Glass right now. We re right in the middle of the prelaunch sequence. You've probably noticed a few videos here and there, a number of different blogs talking about it. It's worth paying attention to just to see how they roll this out. Notice when the videos come out, when you hear about it on other blogs and what people are saying about it. Notice when the actual date finally gets released and what happens then. Try to get a feel for the buzz when it happens. It's a very powerful thing. I hope those strategies make sense to you. Just to go over them one more time... Strategy #1: Meet and greet and share what's neat. That's actually meeting people in person and getting them interested in what you have.
Strategy #2: Building relationships, real friendships, online. Those two are almost a given. Strategy #3: Utilizing a waitlist of some kind, especially if your product calls for one. Strategy #4: Scarcity. Strategy #5: Making an event out of it. Strategy #6: Create a series leading up to that event. Strategy #7: Maybe combine that event with a webinar and get people to interact. Strategy #8: Run a contest or sweepstakes. Strategy #9: Get testimonials. I wish I could go into each and every one of these on their own and each and every one of these could probably make its own podcast episode. Actually, we have a couple on webinars already, so go back in time, listen to the one with Lewis Howes. I can't remember the exact number but I'll put it in the show notes. It's a great one on webinars. And, yeah. I really hope this session resonated with you, because buzz is so powerful and these are strategies that you can take with you to infinity and beyond. If you get what I just did there, let me know on Twitter @patflynn! Before we go, we have a question from a listener that I'm going to play. This is from Alex from modernhealthmonk.com, who has some questions from autoresponders and using multiple lists and staying organized. Let's play the audio. Alex: Hey Pat, this is Alex from modernhealthmonk.com and I have a quick question on autoresponders. I'm in the health niche and I have a number of autoresponders for weight loss or different health problems, and I also have a main list autoresponder. I'm just wondering how to use autoresponders effectively without spamming my audience and still, you know, pre-programming those so that they're delivering value just months and months ahead of time. And you know, it's hands-off for me. But again, without spamming people, because I have multiple lists and some people, you know,
they double opt-in on multiple lists so sometimes they're getting a weight loss message, they're getting a normal list message and then you know--if I notify them of a new epic post that I think they should read, and then maybe you're getting three a week and that's--for me, if I was getting three a week from one list I'd unsubscribe. So just wondering if you notify people of new posts or how you would use multiple autoresponders. Thanks a lot, appreciate it! Pat: Alex, thanks for your question. I really love that you said "adding value" to your readers and subscribers, because that's exactly what you want to do, always. You've got the first step already. This just shows me that whatever you send to your subscribers, whether it's through an autoresponder or through your broadcasts, it's going to be useful, and that is of course the main thing. You've already shown that you've got your head on straight when it comes to email lists. When it comes to using multiple lists--that's a really smart thing to do, you know, separating parts of your audience within your list, you can hit them specifically with stuff that's tailored just for them. One thing to keep in mind is that, generally--at least this is the way it is for most email software, and this is the case for AWeber, which is what I use. I'm not sure what you use, Alex. But a lot of them do this--if you have a single person cross multiple lists, maybe one person signed up to your main list, and then also someone to your weight loss list, and then someone to your cardio list, whatever you have--if you send one broadcast out to all of your lists, you know, I know a lot of people worry that they're going to get that email too many times if they're on 3 different lists. But I know AWeber has this thing called automatic de-duplicating, which is awesome, and that makes sure that if you send a broadcast to all of your lists together, each person should only get that email one time. Even if they're on every single list. So just make sure your email service provider does that. If you're on AWeber, that's, you know, you don't have to worry. One thing I like to do to keep things organized a little is to keep Monday and Tuesday open only for broadcast emails to everyone. These can be any days of the week that you want, but I have specifically Monday and Tuesday only for broadcast emails. Then the rest of the week only for auto-responders. This really helps me make sure that "Okay, today's Monday, nobody's getting any other emails from me today, so if I send a broadcast out, it s the only one they're going to get."
Personally, I think--and it depends on every audience that's out there of course--but personally I think if you send two email per week on opposite sides of the week, that's going to be OK. Especially if, like you said, Alex, you're going to always be providing value. Now you might even do it so that every Wednesday is weight loss and Thursday is another list and Friday is another one. Again, just to make sure that you're not hitting people twice in a single day. But I think that if you set the expectations up front when people sign up for a new list--okay, you're going to get another set of emails here if you set up here, and you just happen to place them on different days than the other ones then you should be totally good. Then you should be totally good. Hopefully that helps. I have a couple of other email resources and autoresponder things I put into the show notes. Again, that's smartpassiveincome.com/session69. And thanks again Alex for your question--if you have a question, if you're a listener out there and you have a question you'd like to send me and possibly get on the show, go to speakpipe.com/patflynn. And I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you all so much for your attention today. Again, show notes and links to resource available at smartpassiveincome.com/session69, and lookout for more Niche Site Tool posts coming up. At this point in the recording, I'm pretty sure I've found my target keyword. I've done keyword research for a few days now, struggling in the beginning, wasn't finding anything, but I think I've found the one I m going to use. It's a little competitive, we'll see. I might stumble upon one that's a little more open. We'll see. I m still going to conduct research just in case. But I can't wait to share it with you, so look out for that soon. Please, if you have a second--just a second--please leave the SPI podcast an honest rating in itunes if you haven't already. It really helps with the rankings and the popularity of the show. We're currently up to 839 5-star ratings, which is awesome. I would love yours there too, even if it's a 1-star rating. If it's honest, it's all I care about. I want to improve if you feel like I need to. And I know I do! If you're looking for speakers for your event--this is a new announcement I've never done before. If you're looking for speakers for your event maybe in 2014--hit me up on the contact form at patflynn.me and I look forward to seeing, or speaking, to all of you in session #70.
All right, have a good one, all the best to you, cheers, and bye! Announcer: Thanks for listening to The Smart Passive Income Podcast at www.smartpassiveincome.com. http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/session69